Norwood News, in partnership with WFUV radio and BronxNet Television, presents a five-part series on national issues affecting voters in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, seen through the local lens of Bronx neighborhood communities. This segment looks at immigration.

 

In the final presidential debate on Oct. 22, President Donald Trump touted his administration’s efforts to increase border security and said undocumented children in federal custody had been brought over by “coyotes and cartels.”

 

Since he announced his run for president five years ago, Trump has always taken a hard stance on immigration, making it a pillar of his domestic agenda. In February 2019, the president declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border, enabling him to allocate billions of dollars to build a border wall, after Congress repeatedly blocked funding for it.

 

Framing undocumented immigration as a national security issue, the president’s re-election campaign page highlights his administration’s efforts to unwind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012, as well as the arrest of around 270,000 undocumented immigrants since Trump took office.

 

The DACA program shields, from deportation, some young, undocumented immigrants, who often arrived in the United States at a very young age and in circumstances beyond their control.

 

More than one third of the 1.4 million residents of the Bronx were born outside of the United States, according to a 2018 report from the New York City Comptroller’s Office. Immigrants also make up half of the borough’s work force and 60 percent of self-employed entrepreneurs.

While federal policies related to immigration and naturalization are always a hot-button issue in New York City, the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on how quickly immigrants fall through the safety nets designed to prevent financial ruin in times of crisis.

 

Immigration advocates say immigrants have been left particularly vulnerable amid the ongoing pandemic, as they have been left without access to unemployment benefits or federal stimulus money, which is severely impacting their ability to pay their rent.

 

BronxNet’s Daren Jaime recently interviewed Jennifer Hernandez, the lead organizer at Make the Road New York, a grassroots community organization that fights to build power for immigrants and working-class communities. During the interview, Hernandez explained that in addition to being first to fall through the cracks economically, undocumented residents are also more vulnerable to intimidation because of the fear of being deported.

 

“I think especially for undocumented folks, there’s a lot of fear of retaliation, when it comes to immigration status,” she said, adding that immigrants also lack access to various other programs that could help them financially. “So, it is extremely hard.”

 

In response to the pandemic, Make the Road New York has focused its efforts on securing government assistance for undocumented residents, helping them negotiate the cancellation of accumulated rental payments, and pushing for a reduction in the number of incarcerated people in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 in prisons.

 

Most of their advocacy has been at the local and state levels, but they say federal policy could play a substantial role in helping immigrant households. The president’s challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has said welcoming immigrants to American communities is a priority of his campaign.

 

 

During the final presidential debate, Biden reasserted his plan to reinstate DACA during the first 100 days of his presidency, and to send a plan to Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. His campaign page does not mention any specific plans to provide aid to immigrants who are currently ineligible for existing unemployment and stimulus benefits.

 

Arturo Lopez, the Legal Director of Bronx Works, a community organization working to improve the economic and social well-being of Bronx residents, said some of the largest hurdles for Bronx immigrants are actually quite mundane issues.

 

“There’s a whole host of smaller issues that are much, more technical that the community is facing, that immigrants are facing,” he said. These include dramatically increased delays in the processing of applications for seemingly, simple matters, like the renewal of a legal, permanent residency card, usually called a Green Card or work permit.

 

Lopez said the steps along the pathway to naturalization that used to take less time, have become more exhaustive in recent years. As an example, he cited changes to the fee waiver procedures to maintain a functional ID for immigrants with legal status. This now requires residents to pay $500 annually, a sum, Lopez points out, that can’t easily be paid by most Bronx residents.

 

But beyond the tangible policy changes that have impacted upon immigrants, Lopez said the president’s rhetoric has also made Bronx residents uneasy.

 

“From the people I encounter daily, since the current administration took over, the tone has created a sense of fear, a sense of being targeted, that we did not see coming from the community during the prior administration,” he said.

 

 

During the final debate, Trump reiterated his stance that undocumented immigrants who enter the United States illegally pose a danger to society.

 

Of course, some undocumented immigrants do commit crime, as do residents. In researching a May 2019 story, writers at The Marshall Project, in conjunction with The New York Times, obtained estimates of undocumented populations from the Pew Research Center, sorted by metro area, and compared this data with local crime rates published by the FBI.

 

This created an opportunity, for the first time, for a broader analysis of how unauthorized immigration may have affected crime rates. Their findings suggested that growth in illegal immigration does not lead to higher, local crime rates.

 

The Bronx is the poorest of New York City’s five boroughs, in no small part due to its large immigrant community who work in the City’s lowest-paying jobs, which more often than not are in front line services. The cruel irony is that those who are most impacted by the country’s immigration system can do little to influence it. Their fate lies, instead, in the hands of the electorate.

 

*Síle Moloney provided additional reporting to this story.